Comment by emushack
Putting a price on it does not solve it because the entities that compete for the water with the data centers are out-matched financially. How is a city that has a budget that is constantly dealing with budget cuts supposed to pay more for water than a multi-billion dollar company? Taxing it does not solve it either, because there are so many incentives to writing loopholes into the tax code.
They don't even have to use water - there are alternatives. The solve is changing behavior of the leaders in this greedy industry.
> Putting a price on it does not solve it because the entities that compete for the water with the data centers are out-matched financially.
I don't think this argument works at all, because bigger datacenter operator does NOT mean "tolerates higher OPEX".
> How is a city [...] supposed to pay more for water than a multi-billion dollar company?
I do not understand this; the city would not compete with the datacenter operator for water-- the farmers would, and both of those would be paying the municipality for the water (ideally), not vice-versa. Residential users already pay much more for water (typically, compared to farming/industry) so any renegotiation is unlikely to affect them much.